Annual Hardiness Type

Perennial Hardiness Zone

Native Species and Cultivars

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Native flowers or wildflowers occupy a special place in our gardens. They are naturally suited to conditions of soil and climate that we find ourselves in, whether too dry, too wet, too shady for many other garden flowers. Wildflowers have ample nectar and pollen to support pollinators that share the same ecosystem. Invite birds, butterflies and hummingbirds into your garden by growing these beautiful native flowers.

Licorice-scented silvery green narrow foliage complements the gorgeous sprays of coral-orange flowers with contrasting rosy violet buds. The elegant spires of bloom and fine foliage creates a haze of color all summer and fall. Deadhead to continue ample bloom. Best in very well-drained soils with a gravel mulch. Avoid heavy clay soils for successful overwintering, and wait until earliest spring to cut back. Drought tolerant once established, water regularly the first year.

Licorice-scented silvery green narrow foliage complements the gorgeous sprays of coral-orange flowers with contrasting rosy violet buds. The elegant spires of bloom and fine foliage creates a haze of color all summer and fall. Deadhead to continue ample bloom. Best in very well-drained soils with a gravel mulch. Avoid heavy clay soils for successful overwintering, and wait until earliest spring to cut back. Drought tolerant once established, water regularly the first year.

"Discovered by Nutall on the alluvial soil at the Arkansas and Red rivers, two or three feet high, with large purplish-pink flowers in August," The Flower Garden, 1851. The bud is encased in luminous, pale golden bracts, which resemble woven baskets. The 5" wide feathery flower heads are spectacular and make excellent dried flowers and are irresistible to bees, both native and honeybees.

A just plain wonderful native annual flower with large (4”) fluffy flowers that tickle your nose as you bend to inhale the sweet honey-like scent. Named for the straw colored bracts encasing the buds that are as intricately patterned as the etchings on Acoma pottery. Its branching habit produces many white flowers with cream centers in succession throughout midsummer and fall. A lovely cut flower too. Fertile, well-drained, alkaline soils best, with low water needs once established.

Mentioned as long ago as Parkinson's time in the late 1500s and championed in the Victorian age along with many other grasses, feather grass is a soft cloud of bloom atop fine, silky stems. It glistens in the summer sun! It is native in North America only to mountains in west Texas and New Mexico and south to central Mexico. It can become invasive in California and other areas. Synonym Nassella tenuissima or Mexican Feather Grass.

Planted by George Washington and admired by Bartram in his catalog as “a most elegant flowering plant”, Texas Star has startlingly large luminous bright red flowers that bloom midsummer to fall. Excellent in large tubs, they can be overwintered dormant where not hardy.

This new cut flower, container and border variety has ample clusters of flowers with a flush of pink warming the edges of the pure white blooms. Lovely and special, it easy to grow and blooms non-stop all summer and fall.

Texan Pride is another name for this showy, easy to grow flower. ‘Brilliant' dates from circa 1901 and was described in 1923 as light pink with a distinct dark pink eye. One of the oldest still available.

One of my earliest loves, annual Drummond's phlox holds its large candelabra blooms strongly upright, all the better to appreciate its lovely colors and patterns. Or in this case its lipstick red flower clusters. Long blooming, thriving with little care, it does best in an airy spot in fertile, well-drained soil. Listed in an 1886 and 1897 garden catalog.

Phlox was a popular bedding plant in Victorian times; old catalogs often featured colored plates of many varieties. It is also one of our favorites for its wide range of color and bloom time. This hybrid selection has warm summery colors of pink, yellow, apricot, red and white.

Annual Drummond’s Phlox were the darlings of the Victorian era when dozens were offered, a testament to its garden worthiness and variety of color and form. This beauty has soft caramel and buff shades with violet and pink accents. A vigorous grower in good soil, given lots of space it will soon be covered in sheets of bloom.

An heirloom listen in an 1886 garden catalog, 'Isabellina' has moonlight-yellow blossoms in clusters. A perfect addition to a white garden, or along paths with California poppy 'Apricot Chiffon' or viola 'Etain'.

It's amazing how the flowers of this hardy annual take after their more lofty cousins, the perennial phloxes. Clusters of 5 petaled lavender blue flowers with white centers bloom all summer long in moderate summer areas until the freezes of late fall.

One of the oldest phlox varieties we have found, ‘Leopoldii’ was available in 1883! Gently tinted flowers of warm pink, each with a tiny cream eye, bloom in clusters on gracefully draping stems. Sweetly scented with a hint of new-mown hay, this variety has larger flowers than most and blooms for months.

A gorgeous confection of a flower with large sprays of blooms held well above the foliage. This selection from our favorite Dutch breeder brings a new color, navy blue, into the lexicon of phlox. Grow in drifts for maximum flower power. Sow early spring, fall in the South.

Vintage seed catalogs refer to these pinwheels of burnished colors as Glorified Black-eyed Susans or Gloriosa daisies. Blooming in summer and fall from an early start, the plump buds burst open into large 4” across flowers that are dazzling in bouquets.

A brand new Black-eyed Susan with layered petals with brush strokes of mahogany. A disease-free vigorous grower, it blooms all summer long and well into fall. Bright and cheerful in pots, it also is a great cut flower, and right at home in the border.

Native to Texas and introduced into gardens in 1847, mealy cup sage is a highlight of annual flower gardens, well-loved for its clean foliage and long spikes of purple all summer and fall. Richly colored and more compact 'Blue Bedder' was listed in seed catalogs as early as 1932.

Mealycup sage is a mainstay of the summer garden, as it always looks fresh and perfectly presentable even in the most sultry of conditions. Native to Texas, the common name refers to the silvery felted calyces. This award winner has blue and white spikes of bloom that attract butterflies.